OAKLAND — The NBA Finals have a very different feel about them since Kyrie Irving went down in overtime of Game 1 with what was a fractured kneecap.

For 50 minutes Thursday night it looked like we were in for an excellent series, but now the Cavaliers will have to scramble to replace their second best player and the only guy they trusted to create shots outside LeBron James. On paper, it’s difficult to see how they do that in a way the Warriors don’t crush.

But as the cliche goes, the games are not played on paper. LeBron is the best player in the world and is on a mission to bring a title to Cleveland. J.R. Smith can get hot. A lot of things can happen that would again change the feel of this series.

Rather than what might be, here are five things I think will happen in Game 2.

1) Expect the Warriors to start the game on a run. The Warriors to a man do not think they played well at all in Game 1. They are not so much making adjustments for Game 2 as much as just trying to execute better what they wanted to do the first time around. That game saw them admittedly come out a little nervous and shoot 4-of-18 to open the contest, which will not happen this time. Look for the Warriors to start the game on a run, something even the Cavaliers’ Iman Shumpert said they expect. The Cavs just want to not turn the ball over to fuel the run, and withstand it, then climb back.

Also, expect the Warriors to try and play faster.

“I think we can still ramp it up a little bit more, get out in transition a little bit more,” Draymond Green said. “But LeBron, he controls the pace on offense, we’ve just got to make sure we’re ready to push the ball off a make or a miss. I still think we can get more into our pace.”

2) Matthew Dellavedova, it’s time for your closeup. With Irving out, Dellavedova will get put into the starting lineup for Cleveland. He was forced into a starting role against the Hawks and played well, particularly on defense where he had an average defender distance of 3.97 feet to his shooter — the best of any non-center in the Conference Finals (minimum of 50 shot attempts). But it’s one thing to do that against Jeff Teague, another to do it against Stephen Curry.

3) LeBron the distributor. LeBron attacked a lot in the last game in isolation, often trying to back different defenders down into the post. A few times the Warriors sent Andrew Bogut and others to double team and help out, but for the most part the Warriors defenders on the weak side stayed home and Golden State took their chances one-on-one with LeBron. He put up 44 points but didn’t get his teammates involved and going — the Warriors can live with that. The Cavs can’t.

“I’ve got to do a better job as well getting my other guys involved,” LeBron said. “I’m okay with getting big numbers and things of that nature, but I feel much better when I’m able to get my guys in rhythm and get them guys some more looks.

“So I think one of the things is trying to stay at home on a lot of my shooters. They didn’t give James Jones as much air space. J.R. got a couple good looks, it just didn’t go down.”

The Cavaliers on the weak side didn’t cut or flash into the lane in Game 1 but Cavs players said that was by design — they didn’t want to bring help defenders closer to LeBron, they wanted to space the floor. Expect that to change a little in Game 2.

“We’ve just got to continue to have movement on the back side, continue to add more cuts to make sure, one, that they can’t load up on LeBron and, two, that he has outlets just in case people are caught sleeping,” Shumpert said.

4) Be ready for some small ball. Golden State has had success all playoffs going small, playing Draymond Green at the five, but in Game 1 coach Steve Kerr sat on that lineup and didn’t break it out until overtime — when the Warriors went on a run and sealed the victory.

When Kyrie and Kevin Love have been out, the Cavaliers have had success going small with a lineup of Dellavedova, J.R. Smith, Shumpert, LeBron and Tristan Thompson — in 50 minutes this postseason that lineup has outscored opponents by 26.2 points per 100 possessions.

The Cavaliers are going to lean on this lineup some in Game 2. While it has worked against the Hawks and Bulls, the Warriors love it when teams try to play small and fast against them. Cavs GM David Griffin summed it up best, speaking about the good numbers they have had with Irving and Love out.

“From an analytics standpoint… it’s not a big sample size. I think you have to take a little bit of that with a grain of salt because it’s also about matchups and we were really fortunate the teams we played lent themselves to the style we were going to play. Golden State is a totally different animal. If you get to choose, you’ll always choose more talent. But I’m really grateful we’ve got the mentality we have.”

5) The Cavaliers don’t think this series is all but over. At their practice and team meeting Saturday the players were beat over the head with the numbers about how good the Cavaliers have been when Irving and Love are out. The players were reminded that a few years back Kevin Durant led Oklahoma City to the NBA Finals and the consensus was the Thunder would be back often after that and pick up multiple rings. Bottom line, they were told not to let up because Irving was out or they would pay a steep price. The players said they got the message.

“A lot of people are saying the series is over, but that’s not true,” Klay Thompson said. “This is a team that’s more than capable. They did beat the Atlanta Hawks twice without him, and that was the best team in the East. So you’ve got to respect what the other guys can do. Obviously, Kyrie’s a huge part of their team. He’s one of their best players. But you can’t let your guard down. They’ve still got guys who are more than capable of making plays.”

To a man the Cavaliers think they still can win, they have a history of success these playoffs without Irving in the lineup. They still have the best player on the planet, they still have an improved defense, and they could have won Game 1.

“You know, I said it’s going to be one of the most challenging seasons of my career from the beginning, and this just adds on to it,” LeBron said Saturday. “You know, we’re undermanned right now. But we’ve got guys in the locker room that are ready for the challenge, and we look forward to the challenge tomorrow night.”

As it turns out, the same has been true for the Cavaliers, albeit in a smaller sample size.

With Kyrie Irving ruled out for the remainder of the postseason due to a knee injury, a silver lining for Cleveland around this darkest of clouds may be found in Matthew Dellavedova, who has played well as part of the team’s second-most used lineup in these playoffs — one that doesn’t feature Irving at all, but has dominated its opponents.

The Cavaliers have had to adjust on the fly this postseason, thanks to Kevin Love being lost in the first round due to injury, J.R. Smith missing two games in the second round due to a suspension, and Irving sitting out two games of the Eastern Conference Finals. Because of all that, Cleveland was forced to try out more lineups than expected, and one in particular has yielded a significant level of success.

The guys the Cavs have rolled out in these playoffs the most have been the members of their preferred starting lineup: Irving, LeBron James, Timofey Mozgov, Tristan Thompson and Iman Shumpert. Including Game 1 of the Finals, this group has played together a total of 105 postseason minutes, has a win-loss record of 7-3, and has outscored opponents by 8.2 points per 100 possessions.

The lineup that’s second on the team’s most-used list is a little less traditional.

When the Cavaliers have gone small with Thompson at center, surrounded by James, Shumpert, Dellavedova and J.R. Smith, they were undefeated in eight games before the Finals, and played 50 total minutes while outscoring their opponents by 26.2 points per 100 possessions.

With Irving out, this might be an option for Cleveland in longer stretches than it has been willing to experiment with to this point of the postseason. There’s (of course) the problem of how well the Warriors may be able to match up, and play their preferred style of uptempo basketball that leads to Green pushing the break, and Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson getting loose for open looks in transition.

But as we saw in Game 1, it’s difficult for the Cavaliers if LeBron has to try to drag his team to victory all by himself. Without Irving, he will have even less help in Game 2, and they’ll have to get a little bit desperate. The small lineup has proven to work in short bursts, and now seems like the perfect time to unleash it fully, just to see what havoc it may be able to bring.

Matthew Dellavedova played sparingly for the Cavaliers in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, but that’s likely to change significantly beginning with Sunday’s Game 2, now that Kyrie Irving has been ruled out for the remainder of the series with a knee injury.

Dellavedova can’t match what Irving brings offensively, but he brings a different dynamic to the court, and it’s one that his opponents have often found to be frustrating.

Dellavedova was involved in three questionable incidents during Cleveland’s postseason run. The first, with Taj Gibson of the Chicago Bulls, was largely Gibson’s fault, and didn’t result in anyone being injured.

The two with the Hawks, however, are open to some debate. Dellavedova took out Kyle Korver while diving for a loose ball, and while Korver was lost for the rest of the playoffs, there didn’t seem to be any intent on Dellavedova’s part to cause the injury.

Horford had Dellavedova with a Kelly Olynyk arm-lock that caused the two to fall to the floor in the first place. Dellavedova fell awkwardly into Horford’s leg, the same way he did in (inadvertently) taking Korver out for the remainder of the playoffs. Horford obviously felt it was intentional, and retaliated. But Dellavedova may have flashed back to Kevin Love‘s season-ending injury when Horford had a hold of him, and could have felt justified in attempting to inflict some damage.

Since then, Dellavedova’s teammates and coaching staff have said more than once that he’s not a dirty player, only one who’s intense. At Finals media availability on Friday, Dellavedova admitted the talk bothered him, at least initially.

“I mean, I was pretty annoyed by it to start with,” he said. “Then between Game 3 and 4 just pretty much turned off the phone and just prepared my body and watched the tape and got ready for Game 4.”

One thing is certain: If Dellavedova should be involved in any type of physical incident against the Warriors, the conjecture will return, and it will be magnified immensely given the fact that he’s now playing on the game’s biggest stage.

OAKLAND — As the Cavaliers try to win their first NBA championship, they will now be without yet another star. Kyrie Irving suffered a left knee injury in overtime of Game 1 of the Finals, and the initial prognosis was that it was unlikely he would play Sunday’s Game 2.

The reality is much, much worse. From the team’s official press release:

Cavaliers guard Kyrie Irving left last night’s NBA Finals game one in the overtime period with a left knee injury. He received an MRI today at Stanford Sports Medicine Clinic, which revealed a fractured left knee cap. He will have surgery to repair the knee in the coming days at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland by Cavaliers head team physician Dr. Richard Parker. His recovery time is projected to be three to four months and his status will be updated as appropriate.

This news is awful on several levels. It’s probably a series-ender for the Cavs, who will have to be without their other primary scorer besides LeBron James against the Warriors’ deep, balanced defense. It sucks for fans hoping to see a competitive series.

But most of all, it sucks for Irving, who has battled injuries throughout the playoffs and not been himself. He started to look better in Game 1, until the injury. Now, he will join Kevin Love watching the rest of the Finals from the sidelines.

“I had so much fun watching it because I want to be in a moment like that,” Love told ESPN after the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 108-100 overtime loss to the Golden State Warriors. “I’d rather be out there helping those guys, and I saw a lot of places where I could help.

“I’ve never wanted to be in a game more than that one,” said Love, who had never been on a playoff team in his six prior NBA seasons.

Asked specifically whether that meant he wanted to be back in Cleveland next season, Love said, “Yes. I want to win.”

Asked why that speculation remains, Love said, “It’s just the way the world works now. People talk so much and might tell themselves a lie so much they start to believe it. From there, the narrative starts to change. I haven’t changed my narrative. I’m going to keep supporting these guys, and we’ll be talking to Cleveland after the season.”

“I just think that they need to realize that I love being here,” Love said. “I don’t know where the misconception came along, but I love this team. I love this organization, and somewhere along the line it went the other way. I think that wholeheartedly they need to realize that I do want to be here. I have fun being here.”

That was in 2013 about the Timberwolves. You know how that turned out.

Love’s public statements – while they mean something – aren’t the most credible on this topic. I don’t think he’d go out of his way to express his desire to stay in Cleveland if he had serious plans about leaving, but I wouldn’t rule that out, either.

The team is in the NBA Finals. He wants to be supportive. That might coincide with his true intentions for the offseason. It might not.